Harris, Ian --- "Can the House Accommodate 19 Million Australians?" [2001] ALRCRefJl 5; (2001) 78 Australian Law Reform Commission Reform Journal 21

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Reform Issue 78 Autumn 2001

This article appeared on pages 21 – 23 & 73 of the original journal.

Can the House accommodate 19 million Australians?

By Ian Harris*

When the House of Representatives met for the first time in Melbourne 100 years ago, the honour of making the first speech in the House was bestowed on WilliamGroom from Queensland. His speech encapsulated the hopes of a new nation for its new parliament. At the same time, Groom gave some forewarning of tensions that would arise between the role of Members as representatives of their electorates and their broader role as national legislators.

‘We are now supposed to be rising above the provincialism of state government,’ Groom told his fellow Members. ‘We are supposed to be now in that ‘higher sphere’ to which reference has so often been made; and I cannot but express the hope that in the discussions and deliberations of this House we shall set such an example to the other states in matters of legislation as will reflect honour upon the first Commonwealth Parliament.’

Our federal system of government provides for representatives from a diversity of regions throughout Australia to gather together in the national parliament to make laws for what the Constitution describes as ‘the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth’. While federalism provides the basis for uniting the nation, the diversity of regional interests represented in the federal parliament gives rise to significant potential for division within the parliament. With so many competing interests, it is indeed a tribute to the parliamentary ability of the Members and Senators who served during the first 100 years that we have such a comprehensive and workable system of federal laws operating in modern day Australia.

Confronting dilemmas: then and now

As we celebrate the centenary of our federal parliament, it is interesting to observe that the dilemmas which Members face in a modern parliamentary environment are similar to those faced by the first 75 Members who took their seats in the House of Representatives. Are Members first and foremost representatives of their electorates and the regions in which those electorates are based or do they have a broader obligation to serve the nation as a whole? What should they do when the interests of their individual electorates/regions are seemingly in conflict with the broader national interest?

In their attempts to determine what is best for the nation, Members and the House in which they work have faced a fair degree of criticism over the course of the century. The interests of the most populous states of the Commonwealth have dominated the House, some would argue. The House has simply become a rubber stamp for a dominant executive government, others would say. These criticisms reflect the essential concern that existed at the very outset of Federation – that federalism would lead to a ‘tyranny of the majority’.

If these criticisms represented the complete facts of the matter we may well be faced with a tyranny. But, from my experience, more subtle influences come into play. The House is not just a one-way street with give way signs that allow the engine of state or any single interest just to cruise on through. It is instead a network of roads that must be negotiated in order to reach the final destination.

There are many avenues that Members of the House can take to ensure that the views of their electorates and regions are represented in the decision-making processes of the nation. These include:

• party meetings at which issues can be raised and discussed;

• individual representations to Ministers on specific policies;

• party committees that allow for detailed debate of policy and legislative proposals;

• various opportunities that exist for Members to raise issues in the main Chamber or the Main Committee (the House’s subsidiary Chamber), particularly through debates on legislation, on the adjournment question and in grievance debate, as well as through individual statements and questions that can be asked of Ministers; and

• parliamentary committees that conduct detailed investigations of issues (including occasionally proposed laws) and seek the views of individuals and organisations as part of their investigatory processes.

The effectiveness of each of these mechanisms can vary, but their existence at the very least recognises that the regional interests that Members represent in the House are relevant to national decision-making. If used to their maximum effect, these mechanisms can help those regional interests to find a strong voice in the federal parliament.

This point was emphasised by the Federal Member for Riverina, Kay Hull, in an article that appeared in our own House of Representatives magazine (About the House, March/April 2000). Ms Hull spoke of her experiences in lobbying to modify the wine equalisation tax. ‘There is a perception that Cabinet makes all the decisions, and that backbench Members do not have much of an opportunity to have a say,’ Ms Hull said. ‘But the process is much more democratic than I ever thought it would be.’

Ms Hull pointed out that Members are able to use both informal and formal parliamentary processes to represent their constituents and argue for changes to proposals put forward by government, even where those Members belong to one of the governing parties. While the requirements of party discipline may mean that this representation does not always occur in the glare of the public spotlight, it would be wrong to assume that Members come to Canberra simply to make up the numbers and follow the dictates of their party.

New face of regionalism

One interesting development that has occurred over the past 100 years is the way in which the concepts of region and regional interest have evolved in the parliamentary and broader context.

At federation, when people spoke of regional interests they tended to speak about protecting the rights of the former colonies that became states within the new Commonwealth. One hundred years on, there appears to be a very different concept of regional interest that is not necessarily linked to state boundaries. When we hear of regional interests in 2001, it is no longer state interests that tend to be mentioned but rather the interests of people living in non-metropolitan and rural areas.

This change in how we view regionalism has developed because of what many consider to be a growing divide between urban and non-metropolitan Australia. This was emphasised recently in a report by the House of Representatives Primary Industries and Regional Services Committee, Time running out: Shaping Regional Australia’s future. The Committee warned that Australia is in danger of becoming ‘two nations’ – those in metropolitan and large provincial centres, and those in ‘the traditional heartland of regional and rural Australia’.

The new face of regionalism presents both challenges and opportunities for the House and its Members. Whereas previously commonality of interest between Members reflected either their party affiliations or their state allegiances, now there is also a consciousness that there is a commonality of interest among those Members who represent regional electorates. The bipartisan Time running out report is just one indicator in this regard.

Parliamentary committees

This commonality of interest is also reflected in the recent series of parliamentary committee investigations that have sought to address issues of specific interest to ‘regional Australia’. Alongside the regional infrastructure inquiry by the House Regional Services Committee, there has been a House Economics Committee investigation of regional banking, a House Communications Committee probe into the adequacy of regional radio services and a Migration Committee inquiry into regional migration.

Maintaining this focus on regional Australia, the House Economics Committee recently took the historic step of conducting its six-monthly meeting with the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia in the major provincial centre of Wagga Wagga in New South Wales. The Committee wanted to emphasise the importance of regional issues for the economic balance sheet of Australia. As a result of that meeting, the House Economics Committee recommended that the Australian Bureau of Statistics include a sample of regional households in its measure of price increases (the Consumer Price Index). Currently only metropolitan households are included in the survey – a ‘glaring deficiency’ according to the Economics Committee.

These parliamentary committees conducting inquiries with a regional focus all have Members who come from regional and rural electorates. They have received hundreds of submissions from people living in non-metropolitan areas and have travelled extensively to regional areas to talk with representative organisations. Their work is keeping regional interests firmly on the national agenda and their recommendations are influencing the future directions of government policy and legislative activity.

Conscious of the need to remain in touch with and relevant to their constituencies, Members view parliamentary committees as a valuable mechanism for finding out the views of the Australian people on a variety of topics. In an attempt to encourage people to contribute to the work of committees, Members have been keen to make committee processes more accessible for the community.

A recent report by the House of Representatives Procedure Committee, entitled It’s Your House, has provided the catalyst for changes in the way committees do business. In that report, the procedure committee suggested that, where appropriate, parliamentary committees should move beyond the formality of their traditional procedures and should try to ‘engage people through processes which may be more familiar or comfortable’.

As a consequence, committees have begun to adopt more flexible approaches to the way in which they collect evidence in relation to their inquiries. Many committees are encouraging people to have their say on inquiry topics by sending in letters and e-mails rather than just formal submissions. We are also seeing more public meetings connected with committee investigations, rather than just formal hearing processes. Also, the House of Representatives now has in place a comprehensive strategy to better inform people about the work of parliamentary committees and encourage people’s contribution to that work.

What, in fact, we are witnessing is an opening up of the House of Representatives so that people can feel more connected with their representatives and Members in turn have better opportunities to connect with the people they represent. In this way, the diversity of regional interests that come together in the federal parliament get a stronger voice in the decisions of the parliament.

With parliamentary committees seeking to engage people more actively as part of their work, and delving into regional issues that are of national significance, Members are sending a clear signal that regionalism remains an important consideration in Australian political life as we embark on the next century of Federation. This reflects what I see each day that I work in the House of Representatives – Members from a diversity of regions balancing the needs of their constituents with the need to make decisions for the benefit of the nation as a whole.

*Ian Harris is the Clerk of the House of Representatives.